Set up advice needed

[Trylo]

Hi!

I've decided to build a FreeNAS.

I will have 1 Volume for my media and files I use frequently (3x WD Red in RAID-Z1).

My question is about backups.
For now I do them manually. I have WD Green drives (1TB, 2TB & 3TB).

Those backups are hardly used, I checked SMART and a 1 year old drive has 86 Power on count and 270h of run time.

So instead of having them on the shelf I thought about putting them in the NAS machine. As these are in so seldom use I was thinking about just keeping them as separete volumes, no redundancy as 98% of the time they will be in spin down so they are not wearing off. I still will have to format them through the FreeNAS right?

 

[anodos]

Hi!

I've decided to build a FreeNAS.

I will have 1 Volume for my media and files I use frequently (3x WD Red in RAID-Z1).

My question is about backups.
For now I do them manually. I have WD Green drives (1TB, 2TB & 3TB).

Those backups are hardly used, I checked SMART and a 1 year old drive has 86 Power on count and 270h of run time.

So instead of having them on the shelf I thought about putting them in the NAS machine. As these are in so seldom use I was thinking about just keeping them as separete volumes, no redundancy as 98% of the time they will be in spin down so they are not wearing off. I still will have to format them through the FreeNAS right?

Please familiarize yourself with our stickies:
https://forums.freenas.org/index.ph...ning-vdev-zpool-zil-and-l2arc-for-noobs.7775/
https://forums.freenas.org/index.php?threads/hardware-recommendations-read-this-first.23069/
https://forums.freenas.org/index.php?threads/hacking-wd-greens-and-reds-with-wdidle3-exe.18171/

FYI, if you create a pool consisting of a single RAIDZ1 vdev, the available space in the pool is determined by the size of the smallest disk in your RAIDz1 vdev. In this case, you'd end up with 2TB capacity.

PS, using the drives in FreeNAS will blow away all the data that is currently on them as FreeNAS will reformat the drives to ZFS.

 

[SweetAndLow]

If you end up putting each drive in its own pool then you don't have to worry about drive size mismatch. You will have to worry about drive failure and not having a proper backup. Having the disks on the shelf gives you the option to move them to a remote location if needed.

To answer your other question, yes you have to format then and wipe the current data on those drives.

 

[Trylo]

OK, I will read those stickies today.

Regarding drive failure: I had two failures and SMART has warned me in time, each time I lost 1-2 files, which is not a problem for me.

 

[cyberjock]

OK, I will read those stickies today.

Regarding drive failure: I had two failures and SMART has warned me in time, each time I lost 1-2 files, which is not a problem for me.

You are pretty lucky. Generally I see drives either "up and die" or die in a way that the entire disk has no data that is readable. :/

 

[anodos]

You are pretty lucky. Generally I see drives either "up and die" or die in a way that the entire disk has no data that is readable. :/

That being said, maybe you should buy some lottery tickets or plan a trip to vegas. :)

 

[Trylo]

I've heard that making a volume of 1TB & 2TB and put it in mirror with 3TB is not a good idea. So maybe I will just take my oldest data that I hardly ever use and make a "manual" mirroring across those 3 drives and then just focus on same size drives for a proper RAID-Z1?